Recent Georgia arrests are signs of growing crackdown

Child exploitation

ATLANTA - The Russians were watching Dr. Gregory Kapordelis for about six weeks.

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Prompted by a tip in early March from the Grand Europe Hotel in St. Petersburg, Russia, a police officer there began investigating whether the Gainesville, Ga., anesthesiologist was flying to Russia to have sex with boys, some as young as 12.

Russian authorities even went into a St. Petersburg home that Kapordelis rented and searched his computer for evidence. Russian police and U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents interviewed six boys who said Kapordelis propositioned, drugged or raped them.

Kapordelis, who volunteered at youth summer camps in Georgia, was arrested last month in New York City after stepping off a flight from Russia.

He was one of three men recently arrested in international child exploitation cases that stemmed from federal or Georgia authorities working with foreign police agencies.

Child pornography and molestation are nothing new, but the globalization of pedophilia is a new focus for domestic and foreign police. Law-enforcement agencies - whether federal, state or local - increasingly are working together and reaching beyond their borders to nab sexual predators of all sorts.

''It's been like we've leaped light years in terms of cooperation,'' said Steve Edwards, a special agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. ''A few years ago, I didn't even have a vehicle for reaching out to other countries. I had to go through the State Department and Interpol.''

The methods authorities use to investigate crimes against children are evolving, and it is common for several agencies at various levels to cooperate on a crime. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has even invited Japanese and English authorities to the state to attend its workshops on computer crimes.

Besides Kapordelis' case, international cooperation led to the arrest this month of Robert Powers, 22, of Hephzibah, Ga. British authorities first called Wyoming state investigators to report that pornographic pictures of an English boy were passed around the world using peer-to-peer software. Wyoming authorities then called Georgia authorities and led them to Powers and nine other possible suspects in the state.

Another Georgia arrest came last week when FBI agents arrested William Krygsman, 33, of Canada. The FBI claims he drove from Canada to Atlanta to have sex with a 4-year-old girl. He arranged it over the Internet with an undercover agent.

Helping the global crackdown on child exploitation is the U.S. PROTECT Act, approved by Congress last year. The legislation made it easier for U.S. authorities to arrest U.S. citizens for crimes committed against children overseas by no longer requiring proof that the suspects planned their foreign crimes while in the United States.

Proving intent was a ''huge investigative undertaking,'' said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

''We'd have to prove they intended to go have inappropriate contact with a child before they left the United States, and that was the only way we could prosecute them,'' Raimondi said.

Kapordelis was believed to be the fifth person arrested under the child-sex tourism provisions of the act, which also mandates a minimum five-year sentence for child pornography or a 15-year minimum if the perpetrator has already been convicted of a sex crime.

There have been plenty of joint operations aimed at protecting children over the last decade. They include names like Blue Orchid, Hamlet, Candyman and Wonderland, the latter of which yielded 107 child-pornography arrests in 13 countries.

Among ongoing operations is Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Operation Predator, which targets predatory crimes, including child pornography and child trafficking. Operation Predator has led to 50 arrests in Georgia and 2,613 nationwide since July.

Edwards said there is no way Georgia authorities could have made the Powers arrest without cooperation of multiple police agencies, foreign and domestic. It is growing more common, he said, for domestic authorities to rely on various agencies, including the 39 Internet Crimes Against Children task forces across the nation, and as Raimondi points out, many nongovernment organizations overseas.

''If we don't cooperate, we're not going to be able to solve crimes in the future because of the way crimes are being committed,'' Edwards said. ''They just don't have boundaries anymore.''